Extension/open plan living advice

getmore4less

MY first shock was bathrooms,

Maybe you missed those changes on the plan because you were asking about the open plan bit.

teneighty

I have to say that I really do not like that layout.


Bathroom off the kitchen via the utility room! Just NO.


Would it be possible to swap the kitchen with the rear bedroom, move the bathroom slightly to get direct access from the hallway?

jojo_1982

clayton16749 wrote: »

Is it your forever house? Then who cares what anyone else thinks, as long as it works for you.


But, if you do want to sell some day then maybe some people would be put off. Personally, from what I can tell, it would put me off - but others might like it.

I don't know if it will be. As long as we are both working in London we wouldn't move. However we bought our "forever home" 3 years ago in a different city before both getting jobs here. My husband works in a profession in which if he wants to change jobs, we will have to leave London and move to a completely different city. Whether this will happen or not I have no idea.

teneighty wrote: »

I have to say that I really do not like that layout.


Bathroom off the kitchen via the utility room! Just NO.


Would it be possible to swap the kitchen with the rear bedroom, move the bathroom slightly to get direct access from the hallway?

I’ve never been a fan of bathrooms off the kitchen myself and we ruled out several houses because of this. Though the main issue with those was a lack of upstairs bathroom rather than it being off the kitchen.
Could you explain a bit more about what you mean by swapping the rear bedroom and moving the bathroom? I really like the idea of being able to access the bathroom from the hall, and would like to make it bigger than it is currently. But if we swapped the rear bedroom and bathroom the bedroom would then have no window.

TBagpuss

I would be put off, but I'm not a fan of open plan in general. The positioning of the bathroom, and having to go through the kitchen and utility would also be a major turn off for me - if the kitchen was also the main living area that would compound the issue for me.

I personally would prefer to have one separate room - so a kitchen/diner plus a separate lounge, or a kitchen/living area with a separate dining room would be preferable for me.

One thing to consider - how big is your family? I remember years ago when my parents were having extension/renovations to our house, their architect waned them to go open plan for all of the living areas. My mum pointed out that (among other things) this would create all sorts of problems if you have different family members needing to do different stuff (her example was having 2 children needing to practice 2 different musical instruments, another needing to do homework and other family members wanting to watch TV, or to listen to the radio while cooking/ washing up. But even if there are fewer of you, think about things like how noisy your washing machine / dishwasher / microwave etc are and whether you want that in your living room.

All that said, open plan does seem to be quite popular and it may well appeal to more people than it puts off.

I wouldn;t want to have to go through (and have all my guests go through) the kitchen to get to the living room, but if it's open plan so it is all one room anyway that wouldn;t really make much difference

DRP

i like open-plan, but not the open plan design you have in mind - sorry!

The current house has 2 reception rooms and a kitchen and you will end up with one big room with a kitchen in it. And the bathroom access is a real no-no.

Depending on the dimensions, I would be creating a new corridor/ hall extension to access the bathroom and then access the utility separately via the kitchen. I would also make a proper L-shape (yours is a T-shape) and separate the lounge from the kitchen-diner.

jojo_1982

TBagpuss wrote: »

All that said, open plan does seem to be quite popular and it may well appeal to more people than it puts off.

Based on comments here that seems unlikely!
Also although the washing machine would be in the utility so not quite so noisy, I hadn’t considered the noise of other appliances that would be in the kitchen still and would carry through to the lounge.

DRP wrote: »

i like open-plan, but not the open plan design you have in mind - sorry!
The current house has 2 reception rooms and a kitchen and you will end up with one big room with a kitchen in it. And the bathroom access is a real no-no.
Depending on the dimensions, I would be creating a new corridor/ hall extension to access the bathroom and then access the utility separately via the kitchen. I would also make a proper L-shape (yours is a T-shape) and separate the lounge from the kitchen-diner.

Unfortunately the dimensions aren't enough to allow a proper L shape, or to separate the lounge from the dining room (the lounge would be too small) and still have a similar sort of layout to this. However we can (like a few people have suggested – thanks) take a corridor off the front bedroom to get to the bathroom.

Does anyone think this is better then?
http://i61.tinypic.com/2zyvq8h.jpg

I personally am much happier with this. But it means losing a bedroom compared to the original plan

Also – what is the problem people see with bathrooms off the kitchen? I’m not keen myself (though hubby doesn’t see any problem with it) but about 50% of the houses in our budget here are the older style terraces that have the bathroom downstairs off the kitchen (and no upstairs bathroom/WC at all). On the plan I put a small cloakroom off the utility still. Would people still have an issue with this?

ChristineL

I like open plan and your layout of kitchen / dining / living room is fine for me. But like some other people the bathroom position would put me off. For me the bathroom has to be accessed from the hall.

rustyboy21

To me, the second one looks fine. Obviously it is a bungalow, so you will always have issues with bathroom/kitchen being together. I would worry about the hall being very dark, so if you could put a large window into the hall from the porch it will be better, even a glazed brick wall may work. I would also like a door from the lounge into the kitchen, so I wouldn't have to walk into the hall to get into the kitchen.


Your link is setting my security into overdrive though, must be something with Tiny pic and advertising. And clicking on previous at the top, brings up a naughty magazine with gurlies in it, which is totally lost on me ! lol:rotfl:

Doozergirl

jojo_1982 wrote: »

Based on comments here that seems unlikely!
Also although the washing machine would be in the utility so not quite so noisy, I hadn’t considered the noise of other appliances that would be in the kitchen still and would carry through to the lounge.


Unfortunately the dimensions aren't enough to allow a proper L shape, or to separate the lounge from the dining room (the lounge would be too small) and still have a similar sort of layout to this. However we can (like a few people have suggested – thanks) take a corridor off the front bedroom to get to the bathroom.

Does anyone think this is better then?
http://i61.tinypic.com/2zyvq8h.jpg

I personally am much happier with this. But it means losing a bedroom compared to the original plan

Also – what is the problem people see with bathrooms off the kitchen? I’m not keen myself (though hubby doesn’t see any problem with it) but about 50% of the houses in our budget here are the older style terraces that have the bathroom downstairs off the kitchen (and no upstairs bathroom/WC at all). On the plan I put a small cloakroom off the utility still. Would people still have an issue with this?

Do you have an actual Estate Agent floorplan? The dimensions seem to have changed. I do this for a loving - you need it to scale to be able to work out what would fit in real life.

Why do you want a loo off the utility? People are always going to use the bathroom in that layout.

jojo_1982

rustyboy21 wrote: »

To me, the second one looks fine. Obviously it is a bungalow, so you will always have issues with bathroom/kitchen being together. I would worry about the hall being very dark, so if you could put a large window into the hall from the porch it will be better, even a glazed brick wall may work. I would also like a door from the lounge into the kitchen, so I wouldn't have to walk into the hall to get into the kitchen.


Your link is setting my security into overdrive though, must be something with Tiny pic and advertising. And clicking on previous at the top, brings up a naughty magazine with gurlies in it, which is totally lost on me ! lol:rotfl:

Thanks. I love the idea of a glazed brick wall between the porch and hall. I feel poor just reading things like that though!

Sorry about that! Maybe when you click on the link it's remembering the last pages I looked at

Doozergirl wrote: »

Do you have an actual Estate Agent floorplan? The dimensions seem to have changed. I do this for a loving - you need it to scale to be able to work out what would fit in real life.

Why do you want a loo off the utility? People are always going to use the bathroom in that layout.

It didn't have dimensions for some of the rooms, for example the bathroom and utility. Originally I made the plan using the measurements they provided for some rooms, assuming it was approximately to scale to guess sizes for the other rooms. That ended up with a very tiny bathroom but when I measured it myself it was 1.6m x 2.2m which is more than their plan suggests. Another issue with their floorplan is also the measurements they provide don't add up. For example the length of the kitchen plus the length of the lounge should approximately equal the measurements of the porch plus dining room. According to their plan the latter is over half a metre longer than the former.

I was thinking of adding it just because a separate loo is always useful.